Best of Interop 2014 Winners Unveiled

I wanted to personally thank everyone who came out to Interop this past week and made the show such a great success. Although, I didn’t win big at the Blackjack table, Spirent’s Avalanche NEXT was a big winner, being selected for the Best of Interop in the Performance category. The judges for this award were Mike Fratto, Principal Analyst, Enterprise Network Systems, Current Analysis and Ethan Banks, Founder, Packet Pushers Interactive, LLC. Here’s what they had to say …

Spirent’s Avalanche NEXT wins in the performance category, because we believe it has finally brought application performance testing capabilities into the realm of traditional IT. Performance load testing has historically been a complex and costly process, because building and verifying the test bed, defining the tests, and interpreting the results required expertise in a variety of disciplines. Avalanche NEXT packages performance and security tests into ready-to-use profiles, creating both the client and server networks and hosts, a functionality which greatly simplifies test generation and execution. With an ongoing subscription, users can download new tests from Spirent as they are made available.

Avalanche NEXT users can also create custom tests based on packet captures that will analyze the packet capture and generate a test scenario with the capability to edit the resulting testing, including changing protocol timings and protocol mixes. NEXT can also be used for protocol fuzzing, a technique of manipulating protocols in abnormal, unexpected ways to test how the target device reacts. Avalanche NEXT tests can be created and modified using a well-designed GUI with intuitive controls.

Tests can be shared among the customer’s team, allowing experts in networking or security to build specific tests that others can use in a repeatable fashion. There is also a full API so that tests can be defined and executed programmatically. Avalanche NEXT is well suited for testing network infrastructure supporting applications, providing excellent ease of use, flexibility, and predictability. Avalanche brings complex testing within reach of the average enterprise.

Here is the complete article providing assessments on all the Best of Interop winners.